In environments in which a limited number of information technology (IT) personnel must maintain the operability of a great many computers, it is important to provide tools that permit such personnel to perform such maintenance tasks remotely. For example, in a situation in which a given computer must have an operating system installed, it is inconvenient for IT personnel to physically travel to the particular computer in order to perform the installation. Tools that permit the installation of the operating system by delivering the operating system across a network would eliminate the need for the IT personnel to travel, and would increase efficiency.
Some basic input/output systems (BIOS) support a feature whereby a LAN controller may be used to access a remote boot server. Executable code is downloaded from the remote boot server, and is then run by the system. Just prior to running the downloaded executable code, the connection to the remote server is closed by the BIOS.
The aforementioned scheme exhibits a shortcoming, however. Some programs need access to the media from whence they originated, while they are being executed. For example, in the context of loading an operating system, only a small portion of the operating system may be downloaded at the time execution begins. Thereafter, the downloaded portion attempts to access the remainder of the operating system from the media. Such a feat is not possible in the context of the remote server scheme mentioned above, because the BIOS closes the connection to the remote boot server prior to execution of the downloaded code. Thus, at the time the downloaded portion of the operating system seeks access to the remainder of the operating system, the connection to the remote boot server is unavailable. Consequently, no access to the remainder of the operating system may be obtained, and the installation fails.
From the foregoing discussion, it is evident that there exists a need for a scheme by which to redirect device commands and data to and from a network, even after execution of downloaded code has begun.